By default, our build enforces code standards that will halt on trivial issues, so we recommend turning off that strict behavior for your first compile. By default, it will also search your system for dependencies, but this can be complicated so we tell the build to use our bundled versions. When you graduate to doing development, you'll want to change the build type to -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug instead of Release.

BRL-CAD source files contain an INSTALL file with more detailed instructions if you want to customize the build.

You don't have to install to run BRL-CAD. You can just run the binaries you just finished compiling. They are in the brlcad/.build/bin directory. There are 400+ tools in BRL-CAD. Here's a couple to get started:

bin/benchmark run
bin/mged
bin/archer

The first command will evaluate your system performance. If you made a Release build, please submit your benchmark results to benchmark at brlcad dot org.

The second command runs the main graphical interface. Be sure to check out the extensive Documentation and Main_Page for tutorials.

The third runs our newer graphical interface that is under development.

Help make BRL-CAD better! There are many ways you can contribute to open source and you don't need to be an experienced programmer. We do need software developers, but we also need artists, writers, designers, and managers.